Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2019 i PC Gamer

In an era where singleplayer shooters have fallen out of fashion, id Software’s return to Doomproved to be a confident, clever statement about what an FPS can be. The 2016 release was arguably the best shooter of the decade, using forward momentum to replicate the frenetic pace of the ’90s classics. By all accounts Doom Eternallooks to focus in on everything that made its predecessor great. Head to p42 to read Andy’s bloody report. In a classic case of counter-programming, this issue we also celebrate The Sims, a series that’s excelled at letting every kind of player tell the stories that interest them. Enjoy the issue! PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Coverlines Twitter @Octaeder This month Made the terrible decision to put the words “Granny Theft Auto” on the cover of…

HIGHS Keanu Reeves His appearance in the game increases the chances of a Cyberpunk 2077 movie says creator Mike Pondsmith. We’re into that. Lightsabers Following criticisms Respawn is making them more like the films. Shenmue III Ryo’s next adventure feels like a Dreamcast game, and we mean that in the best possible way. Mordhau This medieval brawler is superb, but the community is incredibly toxic, which the developer is doing a bad job of dealing with. Gabe Newell We love you, Gabe, but please stop making Half-Life 3 jokes. The latest was at the launch of Valve’s new VR thing, Index. Borderlands 3 The despicable Claptrap being at the forefront of the game’s current marketing push is too much.…

At E3, you end up playing builds of games that are coming to PC, but not necessarily demoed on them. For Sniper Elite VR, I was playing on a PlayStation 4 with that console’s gun controller – and that’s how I ended up poking myself in the face while I was trying to aim my gun at some Nazis. I guess that means I was getting a bit too into it. This demo is nice and simple. It’s basically a shooting gallery from a rooftop, though you can freely move around to get better angles on your targets, and it’s a good representation of how aiming and shooting works in VR. There are essentially two stages to aiming in Sniper Elite VR: you need to hold the rifle to your…

There are two types of Sims players: the ones who create maniacal fantasies, in which hapless, interchangeable Sims are mere pawns in their sadistic games involving swimming pools and deleted ladders, and those who painstakingly recreate people and situations from real life and then run bizarre social experiments with them. As a teen playing The Sims 2, I was the latter. I’d discovered The Sims on a friend’s mum’s PC a few years previously, whilst staying up late into the night on a sleepover, prodding little computer people who couldn’t ever seem to figure out how to use a dishwasher without help. But those early Sims were pixelly automatons. The Sims 2 had the character creator of my dreams. Instead of prefab faces with Lego haircuts, it had nose-length sliders…

“If you don’t like it, why don’t you make something else that you do like?” is one of those questions that many inside fandom spaces have heard, especially when directed towards minorities, and will continue to hear probably until the end of time. It’s a crappy retort that, at its heart, pushes aside real, troubling issues in favour of the artist’s vision. My favourite character in The Walking Dead, Andrea, met a grisly end in the third season finale. So, like any other reasonable person, I decided I was going to change the ending completely. Not by petitioning a complete rewrite of the season, I’ll leave that to Game of Thrones fans, but by making a new one by myself in The Sims 2. As I found out, I wasn’t…

00%-09% Broken or offensively bad; absolutely no value. Example Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude 10%-19% We might be able to find one nice thing to say about it, but still not worth anyone’s time or money. Example Gettysburg: Armored Warfare 20%-29% Completely falls short of its goals. Very few redeeming qualities. ExamplesFamily Guy: Back to the Multiverse 30%-39% An entirely clumsy or derivative effort. There’s little reason to play this game over a similar, better one. ExamplesTrials of the Blood Dragon 40%-49% Flawed and disappointing. ExamplesAliens: Colonial Marines 50%-59% Mediocre. Other games probably do it better, or its unique qualities aren’t executed well. ExamplesPrimordia, Homefront: The Revolution 60%-69% There’s something to like here, but it can only be recommended with major caveats. ExamplesNo Man’s Sky, Ghost Recon: Wildlands 70%-79%…

It seems obvious now in retrospect. The best way for an annualised, licensed motorsport game to stay fresh every summer when the latest iteration trots out onto the Steam Store is, clearly, to chuck in an entirely different racing series as well. With the inclusion of the 2018 F2 championship, F1 2019feels for the first time in the series like a wider world of motorsport, offering that irresistible rags-to-riches journey in career mode and a handling model all of its own to master. It makes a lot of sense. Codemasters has had the handling down for years now, twitchy and frightening, and giving just the right amount of rumble in your hands as you wrestle your car implausibly fast over an impeccably rendered apex. It needed to add something more…

Five years ago Koji Igarashi, director and writer on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, left Konami to make another Castlevania-style game. Five years is a long time, and the Metroidvania genre has grown substantially in that period, but sometimes you don’t want a variation on a familiar theme. You want the same game in a new package. Rejoice, because with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, that’s exactly what you’re getting. Miriam is a science experiment in the shape of a dolled-up anime girl. Together with her friend, a man named Gebel, she was part of an experiment that transplanted the essence of demons into her body. This demonic power comes in the form of shards, thus she’s called a Shardbinder. The more shards you absorb the more you let go…

The gamers running at me have swords, because all gamers own swords, I guess. They also have Monty Python Dark Soulscosplay armour but it can’t save them from the shotgun blasts that reduce them to lumps at my feet. I’m out of ammo before I’m out of gamers, the last one charging with sword held high. But any object you kick is a one-shot kill in this game, and dead gamer lumps are kickable objects. He’s full of potassium and advice on how to kill people There are more impressive gun-fu stunts in My Friend Pedro than breaking somebody’s neck by kicking their dead friend’s torso at them, but this moment of improvisation is typical of what happens between gif-able highlights. Once or twice per level I’ll do something absurd…

MOTHERBOARD Strix X470-F Gaming Asus £185 Get the most from the new AMD Ryzen 2700X with this matching X470 motherboard that’s packed with features. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 2700X AMD £269 Easy to overclock and with huge performance out of the box, AMD’s new flagship CPU is the one to go for. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2080Ti Black Edition EVGA £1,018 EVGA’s custom design is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s reference card, and with great cooling. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £130 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Ripjaws V 32GB @3200 G.Skill £172 G.Skill is always a safe bet for lightning fast RAM, and if you can do without the RGB frills this 2x16GB set will…

1 GO LOW Enemies aim at chest height, so you want to get beneath that and close the distance with a forward roll. 2 BRING THE FIGHT You’re still at risk of a point-blank shooting. Wind your opponent by thwacking them in the groin. 3 THE EXCHANGE Wait until the cop attempts a pistol whip, then grab the gun when it flashes red. It’s yours now. 4 IT’S A KNOCKOUT Let your enemy’s momentum carry him to the ground. Continue on your day better equipped than before.…

There’s something eerie about how walking simulators drop you into an otherwise entirely empty landscape, particularly when they aren’t built to look empty. Often it seems as if everyone has simply stepped away and just never returned, making it all the more impactful when you do come across a sign of life – usually in the form of a snippet of conversation. I love it. I have a lot of love for stories that you uncover by being a bystander to conversations that don’t concern you at all. Getting a glimpse of how characters talk to each other – or even themselves – makes them feel that much more human. Games focused on exploration and discovery are the best for this, because it’s rare that the conversations you hear or…

Every year, the global PC Gamer team gets together to craft the PC Gamer Top 100. The format is simple: we take last year’s list, suggest a bunch of additions, tweaks and removals, and then embark on a series of hours-long discussions going step-by-step through every entry. The result is this book: a rundown of what we think are simply the best PC games you can play today. That caveat is important – these aren’t the most important, most fondly remembered or most influential games. Every entry is something we recommend that PC gamers play in 2019. As always, to celebrate the variety of the platform, we (mostly) only allow one entry per series. Enjoy the list! PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Snubbing your favourites Twitter @Octaeder This month Persuaded our…

RELEASED 2017|LAST POSITION New Evan: Mount & Blade sandboxiness plus XCOMbat. Your mercs take the form of cute, legless pawn pieces, but it’s the brutality of Battle Brothers that stands out. Your guys can suffer stat-altering injuries like brain damage or a missing nose. It’s refreshing to play a campaign where your trajectory isn’t just steady accumulation of power and loot. The difficulty is all-you-can-eat, and getting on the wrong side of a barbarian or acid-blooded giant worm produces setbacks that you feel for days.…

RELEASED 2017|LAST POSITION New Evan: An asymmetrical, 64-player historical FPS where it actually means something to be on the Red Team. It might cost 200 US Marines to claw your way up the steep, scorched earth of Hill 937, where the North Vietnamese have vision, bunkers, RPGs, traps, and can dig their own spawn points. Fighting through ‘unfair’ circumstances like this with your own faction-specific weapons (helicopters, napalm, the M16) provides a small insight into the brutality of the Vietnam War.…

RELEASED 2016|LAST POSITION 42 Jody: Cooking is stressful. There are sharp objects, things burn if you don’t take them off the heat right now, and that order of soup was supposed to go out ages ago. Overcooked puts you in a kitchen with your loved ones, who all have their own ideas about how long to let dirty dishes pile up. Arguments are inevitable. In the chaos of Overcooked, everyone is an idiot sandwich. Phil: A great test of any relationship. SurviveOvercooked’s chaotic co-op and you can survive just about anything.…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in Demon guts Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Had a very good time doing unspeakable things to demons and then speaking about them. MALINDY HETFELD Specialist in No deadlines Twitter @yourkyotowife This month Enjoyed the best half of the deputy editor role – the half without the magazine deadline in it. JEREMY PEEL Specialist in Deadlines Twitter @jeremy_peel This month Suffered the worst half of the deputy editor role – the half with the magazine deadline in it. SAMUEL ROBERTS Specialist in Old anime Twitter @SamuelWRoberts This month Exorcised his E3 demons by writing a whole lot of previews and watching Neon Genesis Evangelion.…

As truth becomes increasingly improbable, The Spy has difficulty distinguishing between well-founded rumour and the fanciful thoughts that naturally occur in the mind just two days before a magazine deadline. Elden Ring, for instance, might be a name generated by a neural network trained come to up with Tolkien titles forever. Or equally, it could be the next FromSoftware game. Its world will be vast and navigated by horse, but The Spy has read enough reports to expect Shadow of the Colossus rather than The Witcher 3. Uncharacteristically, it appears George RR Martin has finished providing its “overarching mythos”. But The Spy swears that, with a listening device held flat against the monitor, you can still hear him playing for time in the E3 trailer, “The Elden Ring, shattered by…

Let me tell you about Abe Welch. He’s a hired goon who is now in a hospital. I put him there, after performing a melee takedown on him in Camden Market during a mission in Watch Dogs Legion. It was at this point I decided to save him to my collection of tracked people in the game. A menu screen tells me he hates Dedsec, no surprise after I knocked him out. But, having hacked into the hospital, I can now prioritise his care, which will begin to change his mind. From there I can help him with the other troubles in his life, like his sister who’s being harassed. Eventually I will have the chance to win Abe to my cause. If all goes well, he’ll have gone from…

DOOM 1993 The original Doom is the gory journey through Hell that set the standard for first-person shooters on PC. DOOM II 1994 Interconnected levels and a greater variety of enemies elevated Doom to new heights in this legendary sequel. FINAL DOOM 1996 A compilation of two Doom II mods, TNT: Evilution and ThePlutonia Experiment. More of a spin-off than a sequel. DOOM 3 2004 A reboot with an increased focus on horror and storytelling, which remains the most divisive entry in the series. DOOM 2016 Another reboot, and arguably a more successful one. This brought Doom back to its violent, fast-paced roots. DOOM ETERNAL 2019 Very much the Doom II to the original Doom, Eternal takes the 2016 reboot and revs it up like…

The last time you stubbed your toe, hopped on one foot, and cursed in a series of wordless noises – “mmmmnaaargh ow umph!” – you were speaking Simlish. The exact collection of strangled vowels that echoed down your hallway probably haven’t yet been heard in a Simsgame, but their emotional delivery is the core tenant of speaking The Sims’ iconic language fluently. Here, anguish communicated more than “I banged my foot” ever could. Feeling is more important than phonology in Simlish. Emotion is the answer to a problem that had developers scratching their heads in 1996. Sims needed to communicate realistically – it’s a life simulator after all – but using English would become repetitive and literally put words into the mouths of characters whose story belonged to the player.…

SIMS 3 SIMS WILL JUMP AT THE CHANCE TO DO LAUNDRY. THE WEIRDOS One of the most charming aspects about The Sims is that it sometimes falls just short of reality. Take having kids in the first game. Instead of showing the mother’s pregnancy, a cloud of daisies will flutter around in the air and ‘give birth’ to a baby in a bassinet. But The Sims is much more accurate to real life now in many ways other than having children. You can go to college, run your  own restaurant, and do laundry – which is equally the worst and best thing to happen to The Sims. The ability to wash and dry your Sims’ clothing first appeared with The Sims 3’s Ambitions expansion pack. It included a few different…

If a Steam game releases off the store’s homepage and nobody is around to review it, is it still a 29%? Regular readers may notice that the majority of our review scores land in the top half of our 0-96% spectrum. There’s a good reason for this, but it’s not the one you’ll have seen posited via various forums or Reddit threads. Simply put, there are a lot of PC games and we only have a finite amount of reviewers, time and pages. And so we pick what we think you’ll be interested in. But even if we like to focus on the good stuff, the scoring brackets found to the left of my tiny avatar are still in play. All of which is to say that when Malindy gives…

CNH2N+2ENERGY – TIGER Pretty sure there’s a magic eye hidden on this one, but it hurts too much to look at. DISTORT – INTERFERENCE There’s a reason this kind of camo doesn’t appear in nature – animals have better taste. OVOLO – FLUID DYNAMICS “Can you make it any greener? What if you painted a greener green on top of the green?” VENUS – STRIPE WIPE The driveable manifestation of a printer jam, yours to own and compete in.…

In a gloomy, perpetually rain-soaked American city where smoke-spewing factories loom over rows of dreary suburban homes, a serial murderer is on the loose. The killer’s calling card is an origami animal, and four very different people find themselves swept up in his wave of terror: journalist Madison Paige, FBI agent Norman Jayden, private detective Scott Shelby, and architect Ethan Mars, whose son has been kidnapped by this so-called Origami Killer. It’s actually possible for every main character to die in Heavy Rain What exactly is Heavy Rain? Well, it’s an adventure game of sorts, with a heavy focus on Shenmue-style QTEs. That means a lot of button-tapping and stick-waggling, whether it’s one character shaking a carton of orange juice before taking a swig or another swinging a fist in…

Amid Evil’s worst weapon is a staff that shoots blue homing blobs – pathetic water balloons that splash against low-poly demons, many of whom look like what you’d get if you coated a bunch of triangles with super glue and threw them in a dryer. I don’t like it or the moments when I resort to it, but I can also use the entire Earth as a grenade, which more than evens things out. Amid Evil is good. The Star of Torment fires clumps of homing crystals It’s a throwback FPS like Dusk, but rather than the hitscan headshots, Amid Evil recalls Heretic and Hexen’s magical weapons. The staff sucks, but there’s also a magic sword, a grenade launcher that shrinks and fires planets (like the Earth), a spike-firing morningstar, a…

Remaining with the same loose theme of ‘things that have bolts’, next we have Iconoclasts. It’s a slightly wordy name for what might be one of the prettiest pixelated games I’ve ever seen. It’s milkshake for the eyes. Even death is cute: colourful little skulls float away whenever I shoot the wildlife. It’s the sort of game that I think all games used to look like growing up. And systemically, it’s a dream – gentle Metroidvania progression that doesn’t feel too back-and-forthy, alongside some elegantly timed puzzles that make me feel delightfully effective. Even the threatening theological police state storyline can’t dent my childlike enjoyment of this.…

MOTHERBOARD B360M-DS3H Gigabyte £60 It lacks overclocking options, but the new B360 chipset is far cheaper than the Z370 and is perfect for this budget build. PROCESSOR Core i3-8100 Intel £120 A great processor for out-of-the-box gaming performance. Opt for the AMD Ryzen 1300X if you’d like to overclock. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 Ventus 6G OC MSI £320 MSI’s budget take on the RTX 2060 is lightning fast for the money, offering out-of-the-box overclocked values. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £26 Even a budget build can benefit from a good CPU cooler, letting you enjoy a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) @2400MHz Corsair £48 DDR4 prices are still high, however this Corsair pair is a good value option. POWER SUPPLY CX-M Series CX550M Corsair £58 A…

TRIP ENSLAVED: ODYSSEY TO THE WEST Ninja Theory lead the way in performance capture. Lindsey Shaw lent pathos to a character who makes a slave of the player. ALYX VANCE HALF-LIFE 2 This is the first twinkle of humanity you see in City 17, where the faces of local law enforcement don’t say ‘happy to help’ so much as ‘weaponised squid’. WHEATLEY PORTAL 2 With Portal 2 Valve set themselves a challenge – a companion whose only means of expression were Stephen Merchant’s voice and two metal eyelids. CLIPPY MICROSOFT OFFICE Clippy was the word processing assistant we never asked for – imbued with strange humanity by two blinking, smug spheres.…

BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL The character addresses the player and thus reveals themselves as a figure doing your bidding. MAKING CHOICES Select dialogue choices and pick the reaction you feel fits best, ensuring you identify more strongly with your character. QUEST DIALOGUE You approach a character and they reveal their problem and ask you to fix it. A conversation meant to send you on your way. TALK TO YOURSELF Characters like Lara Croft vocalise their plans and feelings to keep you on track and react to what’s happening.…

RELEASED 1998|LAST POSITION 78 Tom: It’s vague to suggest an adventure game has ‘heart’, but it evokes the warmth and humanity of Grim Fandango’s cast, who in story terms actually happen to be cold and dead. It’s a story of love, friendship, and death-after-death in an afterlife inspired by the Day of the Dead. The puzzles are often nonsense but it’s bursting with jokes and even features a few touching moments. Glottis the big orange demon is the friend we all deserve and Hector LeMans is a terrifying villain.…

RELEASED 2017|LAST POSITION 72 Phil: A first-person exploration adventure about falling down the rabbit hole of a remote jazz hotel. You explore the converted mansion of celebrated musical icon Peter Norwood, solving problems for a quirky cast of characters. Whether you’re uncovering a finger-destroying musical score or just making a sandwich for a corporate stooge, everything you do is accompanied by a distinctive soundtrack and a witty visual flair. It’s a delightfully surreal space, full of mystery and surprise.…

RELEASED 2016|LAST POSITION New Jody: Top-down stealth set in feudal Japan. Shadow Tactics is a game of ninja stars and distracting tanuki, where you stab a guard and drag him back into a bush before a cherry blossom hits the ground. You have mastered the art of invisibility, and nobody needs to know it took four quickloads to get right. Phil: A worthy successor to tactical stealth classics like Commandosand Desperados. So much so that its creators are now working on DesperadosIII.…

RELEASED 2015|LAST POSITION 28 Tyler: I always second guess myself on this one. If Undertale was really so good, why don’t I think about it anymore? But I always conclude that yes, it was very good. It’s the best game that breaks the fourth wall of RPGs, commenting on authorship and fandom in a way nothing else I’ve played has even approached. It’s easy to forget how much I loved it because it’s been meme’d to death, but if you haven’t played Undertale, you should. Just don’t read anything about it.…

RELEASED 2015|LAST POSITION 13 Joanna: In this adventure game you play as a teenage girl named Max, who must navigate an increasingly complex web of angst while making decisions that may or may not end in the entire destruction of her hometown. You also have developed the power to rewind time, which doesn’t always save you from the consequences of your decisions. This gut-wrenching, coming-of-age tale left me sobbing for my best friend by the end – and made me fall in love with branching narratives.…

RELEASED 2000|LAST POSITION 53 Andy: I replay cyberpunk RPG Deus Ex every couple of years, and I’m always heartened to discover that it still holds up. I mean, visually it’s hideous. But those big, detailed, complex levels, and the sheer amount of ways to navigate them, make this a game that is somehow immune to the passage of time. Every time I play it I find new ways to complete objectives, and there’s something compelling about its bleak pre-apocalyptic world where every wild conspiracy theory is true.…

RELEASED 2003|LAST POSITION 50 Steven: EVE Online is a space-faring MMO with an uncanny ability for creating some wild and incredible stories, and it’s the only game on this list that might be more enjoyable to read about than to play. EVE Online players just keep finding new ways to screw one another over in the most wonderful ways. The last few years have seen long-standing empires implode, betrayals, and even a recent alien invasion that temporarily crippled all of its biggest player alliances.…

RELEASED 2000|LAST POSITION 61 Jody: The first Baldur’s Gate was BioWare recreating Dungeons & Dragons on a computer. It had rules that got in the way and dungeons that went on too long – just like most real games of D&D. Then Black Isle made Planescape: Torment with the same engine. It was a 60-hour RPG, but also a thrown gauntlet. Baldur’s Gate II was BioWare’s response. The plot made sense of the bit where you do sidequests in the middle and companions felt like they had real personalities. Everything good about BioWare’s RPGs started here. Andy: The bustling city of Athkatla is one of my favourite RPG settings: a weird fantasy metropolis that feels genuinely alien and intimidating when you’re first let loose in it. Baldur’s Gate II is,…

ISSUE 204, September 2009 ON THE COVER Command & Conquer 4 IN THE CHARTS I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas 1 I’m just going to quote this passage from our Command & Conquer 4 feature: “[EA is] also keen to point out that the end of the tiberium saga doesn’t mean the end of the C&C universe. Given the changes in Command & Conquer 4, it may be just the beginning.” I guess, if nothing else, you’ve got to admire the sheer optimism. 2 An adventure packed review section, with The Secret of Monkey Island: SE (79%), Tales of Monkey Island: Ep 1 (85%) and Time Gentlemen, Please (87%). 3 PC Gamer rounds up the best free multiplayer games of 2009, including Battlefield Heroes, Quake Live, Puzzle Pirates, Kingdom…

It can be nerve wracking playing a hands-on E3 demo in full view of one its designers – particularly one for a PC game that delights in its difficulty. You’ve got a short amount of time to figure out the controls, intuit the most effective route forward and exude an air of basic competence. Luckily, for Desperados III, I already had some experience. Not from my distant recollections of playing Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive some 18 years ago, but rather developer Mimimi’s previous game, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Desperados III may be a prequel to the classic stealth series, but it feels like the follow-up to the studio’s lauded Edo period sneak-’em-up (itself inspired by both Desperados and the earlier Commandos games. Snake, meet tail). In the…

Concept art for Eternal’s version of the Arachnotron, a returning enemy from Doom II. You can shoot its head-gun off. Described by id as the ‘arch-nemesis’ of the Doom Slayer, this multi-weapon beast is named the Doomhunter. Concept art of another returning enemy, the brilliantly named Pain Elemental. Like a meaner, smellier Cacodemon. An evocative painting of a classicDoomenvironment, which depicts a soul processing plant in Hell. A test model of the Ballista, a devastating new weapon that launches fast-moving projectiles. Similar to Quake’s railgun.…

When I first played The Simsas a little girl, I found it odd that I could have relationships with men and women. It would be many years before I realised that this isn’t just normal – it’s also my normal. THE IMPACT THE SIMS HAD ON ME THROUGH ITS DEPICTION OF QUEERNESS Now that I’m older and have come into my own as a bisexual woman, I’ve realised the profound impact The Simshad on me through its depiction of queerness as natural in the face of a society that once largely found it radical. For the last two decades, The Sims has spearheaded queer representation in gaming. The freedom it’s long offered in letting players romance, woohoo, and marry whomever they wish regardless of gender – to be who they…

I’ve watched enough episodes of Eastenders to know how I should want life among my Sims families to go down. Sarah ought to be boffing Kenneth from across the street behind her husband Jim-Bob’s back. Their grade-school daughter Katie should be bullying every nerd in the playground, while her teenage brother Miles acts as a secret criminal mastermind plotting the downfall of poor, hapless Kenneth’s unsuspecting family. Every dinner-table conversation should be fraught with tension and the possibility that, at any moment, a plate of food could end up flying at the wall. It’s up to me to bring these webs of intrigue to life. But, let’s be honest, that’s not how I really play The Sims. You don’t even need to scratch the surface of the franchise to realise…

We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release of a significant…

RECON UNITS See the little binoculars on the scout men? The binoculars are for seeing things. AT GUNS Place these in forests, or behind houses, so that they can spring forward and attack. ASSAULT INFANTRY Put them in the middle of a row of houses so enemies get a nasty surprise. ARTILLERY Don’t only bombard where you’re attacking – use it to keep sections of the enemy line pinned. SLEIGHT OF FORCE Keep troops out of sight behind terrain until you’re ready to attack.…

Plagued by nightmarish visions of a drowned city and a colossal tentacled beast, private detective Charles Reed travels to the town of Oakmont to find answers. Storms have been battering this once thriving fishing community, cutting it off from the mainland, flooding parts of it, and leaving the rest sodden and dilapidated. And to make matters worse, the locals are deeply suspicious of outsiders. But with the source of these harrowing visions lurking somewhere in the city, Reed has no choice but to get his feet wet. The Sinking City’s dreary setting is also hard to love The Sinking City is a third-person detective adventure set in a fictional version of 1920s New England, inspired by the works of influential (and, yes, controversial) horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Divers uncover an…

ETHAN MARS Architect whose family is destroyed when his son is killed in an accident. Then his other son is kidnapped by the Origami Killer. MADISON PAIGE A journalist suffering from insomnia and nightmares. An encounter with Ethan leads her to investigate the Origami Killer. NORMAN JAYDEN A talented, and secretly drug-addicted FBI agent who has been sent to assist the police in the hunt for the Origami Killer. SCOTT SHELBY A private detective who is also hunting for clues about the Origami Killer. He has a partner of sorts in Lauren Winter.…

Binary Domain is the sort of game that inspires 7/10 list features (that’s list features about average games, not average list features). The characters, apart from the chipper French robot, are uniformly bland. It’s so much fun shooting robots with machine guns that it just doesn’t matter. It’s a masterclass in how an obviously flawed game can capture your heart. Like a dog with a fat ear, those minor imperfections just give it more character. If you’ve ever wondered how a game can score 75 per cent and still be incredible, simply play Binary Domain. And if you’ve already played it and understand why it’s so wonderful, go ahead and add 10 points to that score.…

If you’re doubtful that your current PC is fast enough to warrant purchasing a better graphics card, I have some data for you. Even with the fastest graphics card around, running at a resolution that puts more of the burden on your CPU (1080p ultra), there’s often only a minor improvement in gaming performance. Yes, truly old CPUs are going to struggle, but going from a Core i7-4770K to a Core i7-8700K only improves gaming performance by 20 per cent on average, at 1080p ultra. What happens if you use a graphics card that’s 20-30 per cent slower than an RTX 2080? Your CPU becomes even less of a factor. If you have at least 8GB of system memory and a Core i7-4770K or better CPU, you should be fine…

MOTHERBOARD Prime Z370 A II Aus £153 Great shielding, full of features, and featuring that – ahem – all important RGB lighting, this is a fine Asus board. PROCESSOR Core i5-8600K Intel £231 Six cores, six threads, good out-of-the-box clock speeds – and it’s overclockable. No performance bottlenecks with this installed. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 Twin Fan Zotac £320 Serious power from the ‘just about affordable’ end of Nvidia’s new GPU fleet, and it’s ray tracing-ready too. COOLER Hydro Series H55 Quiet Edition Corsair £55 Tidy and quiet, the H55 will unlock our CPU’s overclocking potential and look good through your case window while it does so. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair £69 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this…

Zombies are not known as fussy eaters. Yet this one – a sentient slice at the vanguard of the unbread horde – is demanding better service. It ordered a burger with only beef, lettuce, and cheese, but the one I’m holding also comes with tomato. That simply won’t do. So it’s back to the grills, while the malt monstrosity bangs its head against the door of my kitchen, threatening to bring the whole operation down. Horde mode is the clear highlight of Overcooked 2’s Night of the Hangry Horde DLC – a spin on tower defence in which you spend as much time repairing barricades as chopping ingredients in an attempt to keep your clientele at bay. But it’s merely the latest course in a tasting menu of inspired additions…

Authoritarian regimes often pick train stations as the place to present an idealised face to the world – a sort of dictator’s Instagram account. A station in a capital city is a point of entrance, a  shiny front door to a society. It’s a confined space where message can be easily controlled. No expense was spared on Moscow’s famous metro system, with enough marble and chandeliers to suggest an underground ballroom. At the height of the Soviet Union, photographs of Stalin were hung from its walls. The street facade of the central station in Pyongyang, meanwhile, has the appearance of a shrine – thanks to the portraits of the two Kim Jongs at the foot of its clocktower. On their flanks, a long colonnade props up a row of letters,…

SERVICE REVOLVER A standard issue .357 Magnum with a wooden grip. If you pull the trigger you’d best prepare for a mountain of paperwork. NIGHTSTICK If a suspect becomes aggressive your nightstick will come in handy, but misuse it and you may lose your badge. TICKET BOOK You play as a traffic cop in PQ, which means writing a lot of tickets, whether it’s for speeding or illegal parking. RADIO EXTENDER A cop’s best friend, used to call for backup or report a crime. This thing could save your life, so always keep it close.…

DRIVE TO ISTANBUL JALOPY  shop.excalibur-games.com/products/jalopy A road trip in a knackered Trabant during the fall of East Germany, Jalopy is Euro Truck Simulator reimagined as an art game. You wind up loving the car, which needs regular attention just to keep going. The mundane moments are oddly memorable – washing the wheels, or checking into your bare motel room. STOP THE GREENSKINS ORCS MUST DIE! 2  robotentertainment.com/games There’s a rhythm to Orcs Must Die! – the way its thoughtful trap placement phase flips to hectic siege defence and back again, like the repeating structure of a James Brown song. Every round has a compositional feel, as you build up the perfect killboxes. It’s that creativity which makes it an all-timer. FIGHT FOR EVIL TYRANNY  www.paradoxplaza.com/tyranny/TYTY01 GSKMASTER.html Obsidian’s strangest RPG positions…

RELEASED 2016|LAST POSITION 76 Jody: This horror game about teenagers on a spooky island does have eerie moments – if you’ve ever read about numbers stations you’ll understand the kind of creepiness it’s evoking with its story of radio ghosts. The best thing about it, though, isn’t the scares. It’s the way Oxenfree’s teens talk over each other realistically. You never know when choosing one of the word balloons to respond to their believably teenage banter might break the flow of conversation. Like every teenager, every time you open your mouth you might be jamming your foot in it. It’s hard to talk about Oxenfree’s horror side without spoiling it, but its conversational side – well-written, funny, and with a rhythm that puts most RPGs to shame – makes it…

RELEASED 2019|LAST POSITION New Evan: Messy, unfair, and brutal, just as medieval warfare was meant to be. I love the way that Mordhau makes kill-stealing a certifiable skill – I take pride in being that guy who can whirl his zweihänder into a steel party-in-progress and decapitate someone who’s already engaged (without gutting my teammates, usually). Likewise, it’s the heroic fantasy of winning outnumbered fights, of dancing around four dudes who are poking at you with spears and still being the last one standing. Also: the heroic fantasy of clubbing a Templar with a frying pan. It’s a shame it’s being undermined by an unusually toxic community and the absence of a modern player reporting system. Triternion’s response to this unchecked tire fire is pretty 13th century.…

RELEASED 2011|LAST POSITION 69 Tom: With each expansion Stellaris creeps up on GalCiv 2. And yet this classic 4X game remains one of the smartest empire-builders you can play on PC. The factions are imaginative and the AI is slightly terrifying. If you’ve read Tom Francis’ Galactic Civilization 2 diaries you’ll know it’s a great story generator too. Oddly my favourite part might be the ship builder, which lets me customise the way my forces look on the map. You can build some very odd and broken stuff.…

RELEASED 2015|LAST POSITION 56 Tom: Make war with sad spaceships in one of the most beautiful RTS games ever made. The lasers, drive trails and spaceship designs are timeless, so the Remaster only had to touch up some textures. It’s one of the few games to try real-time strategy in true 3D. It can melt your brain at times but the action is always spectacular. Great use of Adagio for Strings too. Andy: People often say No Man’s Sky looks like the cover of a ‘70s sci-fi paperback come to life, but I think Homeworld does it better. The brightly-coloured ships are pure Chris Foss, and watching thousands of them duking it out against vivid nebulas is absolutely thrilling to behold. The campaign is also one of the best in…

RELEASED 2000|LAST POSITION New Phil: Incredibly influential, many of the games elsewhere on this list (not least Dishonored 2) owe a debt to the first two entries in Looking Glass’s first-person burgle-’em-up series. But Thief II isn’t just included here as a historical curiosity. The fact is it’s still one of the best stealth games you can play in 2019. Its levels are immaculately designed, its tools make for excitingly tense encounters, and its community is still active and still building new mods and missions.…

RELEASED 2015|LAST POSITION 43 Fraser: There are a lot of good stealth games that fall apart the moment you get spotted. The game devolves into a less tense, less thrilling action game, maybe. Or you’ve failed instantly and that’s the level over. Not here. Invisible, Inc. is a turn-based tactics game that’s pure stealth, but it’s equally brilliant when you screw up and get caught. Maybe your agent has an ability that can save them. You might simply be able to escape, ensuring your agents make it to the next mission. But if you’ve got an agent down, stunned and in another room, do you rescue them first? There are a bounty of options, and they’re almost always followed by persistent, dramatic consequences that change the complexion of a campaign…

RELEASED 2016|LAST POSITION 14 Bo: While its popularity has waned some in the face of battle royales like Fortnite and Apex Legends, Overwatch remains one of the most accessible multiplayer hero shooters you can play. Its enormous cast of 30 characters (and still counting) cater to just about any playstyle that takes your fancy. From fast-twitch damage dealers like Tracer and Widowmaker to less aim-intensive heroes like Reinhardt and Brigitte (and everything in between), there’s something here for everyone.…

RELEASED 2015|LAST POSITION 23 Samuel: Her Story’s unusual style of play – you’re piecing together bits of video by searching for words from the audio in a police database – makes it very easy to recommend to people who have never played games before. This is the game that gets the closest to making you feel like an actual detective: following your own intuition and coming to conclusions yourself, rather than trying to figure out exactly what the game’s designer wants you to do next.…